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Primary Sources Research: Historical Newspapers

Using Historical Newspapers

Historical newspapers provide you with:

  • Primary sources for a specific region or time
  • Views of that time era's culture
  • Details of local history
  • Reflection of community growth

Online Historical Newspaper Access

  • Chronicling America  Source: Library of Congress
    Search America's historic newspaper pages from 1789-1924

  • Google News Archive   Source: Google
    Some of the news archives date back to 1700s

  • American Civil War Newspapers   Source: Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
    The goal of the American Civil War Newspapers database is to select a representative group of journals to index, with digital images of the newspapers themselves, for use by students and scholars. The newspapers selected will be a representative sampling of Union and Confederate, urban and small town, Eastern and Western, pro- and anti-administration.

  • Internet Archive Newspaper Collection   Source: Internet Archive
    The newspapers in this collection have been scanned as part of a pilot project using microfilm and microfiche. After using a microfilm/fiche scanner to create a digital image of each page, we process the resulting images so that each reel is contained in a single item with easily navigable files.

  •  California Digital Newspaper Collection Source: University of California Riverside
    1,500,000 pages of significant historical California newspapers published from 1846-present, including the first California newspaper, the Californian, and the first daily California newspaper, the Daily Alta California.

  • New York Times Historical Newspapers available through San Francisco Public Library  (see Ms. Bogas for access)

  • San Francisco Chronicle Historical Newspapers available through San Francisco Public Library (see Ms. Bogas for access)

  • NewspaperCat (U.S. and Caribbean)  A University of Florida project that seems to have ingested all the U.S. and Caribbean newspapers and made them searchable by title, language and place of publication. 

  • List of Online Newspapers by State
    Interested in viewing all newspapers available online for California or for another state? All of these articles are full-text. This site is sponsored by University of Pennsylvania.

  • Historical African American Newspapers available by chronology

  • LIFE Magazine Photo Archive  Hosted by Google, this digital archive has over 110 years of images published in Life Magazine.